monique

Dribs and Dabs of the Day

John said last night that we wouldn't be able to have pot
roast after all the boys have left home.

"What, no pot roast! I can't have pot roast for the rest of
my life?"

"Well, if you make it," he replied. "we'd have to eat it
for a week."

That set me to thinking about how I'm going to manage this.
I am not going to go without pot roast for the next twenty
or thirty or forty years just because there's only two of
us. I'll just have to figure out how to cook the same
sorts of meals while still taking care not to waste the
leftovers.

Okay. Here's the basics: pot roast with mashed potatoes and
gravy. Leftovers could include hot roast beef sandwiches,
cold roast beef sandwiches for lunches and little beef pot
pies. I could freeze the extras. It would be worthwhile
making mashed potatoes because I would cook extra boiled
potatoes which I would take out before mashing the rest and
use those for hashed browns for breakfast. Roast chicken
with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy give me the same
sorts of leftover solutions.

I could make meat loaf and freeze uncooked portions in small
containers for other meals. Cooked spaghetti sauce and chili
freeze well. Desserts are more of a problem. We can't
eat an entire pie but I could always give some away to my
parents or John's. Or I could make them in individual
little pie pans, just like my grandmaman used to make
for me when I was little. I don't like those flimsy
aluminum pans though. I'll have to find some good, small
metal pie pans. Cakes are easy; make them into
cupcakes instead and freeze the extras. Same with cookies.
See? It'll work.

That is, of course, IF I want to continue doing the amount
of cooking I do now. Then again, with freezing portions
I'll have days and days when all I'll have to do is defrost
something so that may well be worth it. More time to quilt!
I guess I'll see how that goes.
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Gavin is writing an occasional column for the Albany
Democrat-Herald newspaper as part of their Young Voices
feature. They chose one student from each of the high
schools in their circulation area to participate. All the
photographs and biographies of the students were in
today's edition so I bought several copies to give to
grandparents and to save. Gavin's first piece will appear
sometime at the end of November or early December. He wants
to write about his dog, Shep, who he's had since he was
three years old. In particular, he wants to describe how
his dog has changed now that he's so old; he's 14 or 15 now.
The editor said she'd like a photo too and we have several
nice ones so that won't be a problem.
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I decided not to go to Corvallis this morning. I want to
finish the Bowtie Quilt I have in the frame so I can put in
the Leap and then the Four Pumpkins and quilt those in the
next couple of weeks. After hunting through several
boxes I found some black quilting thread which I'll need to
quilt the cat in the Leap quilt so I've put that aside. I
hope I can find it again when I'm ready for it. At the same
time I found some pink thread which I'd bought to sew the
binding on a Four Patch I quilted last spring. I need to
finish that but I loathe putting on binding so maybe I'll
just wait until I finish quilting the Bowtie. Then I can
bind both at once and get it over with.
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When I go outside so early in the morning or perhaps I
should say, very, very late at night, it's dark
and because the sky is clear I see the bright stars and the
moon. It was a full moon on October the second, but it
still looks like a full moon to my naked eye. This isn't
the Harvest Moon as many seem to think, but the Hunter's
Moon. The Harvest Moon was in early September. Just
wanted to set the facts straight is all.
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